Election 2012 Aftermath

ObamaCare architect Zeke Emanuel will now explain to you unwashed dolts exactly why you cannot keep that doctor you have been seeing for years and years, and trust with your medical history, (real) healthcare, and life…

Got that, dummies?

1) Because Obama did not say you could have unlimited “choice”. Where the Hell did you get that idea? (That’s just for aborting babies without restrictions.) Sheesh, you people are dumb!

2) Hey, if you really want to keep your doctor you have to pay Obama more, suckers! It’s the Chicago extortion way.

Americans who are buying insurance plans over online exchanges, under what is known as Obamacare, will have limited access to some of the nation’s leading hospitals, including two world-renowned cancer centres.

Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.

Experts say the move by insurers to limit consumers’ choices and steer them away from hospitals that are considered too expensive, or even “inefficient”, reflects the new competitive landscape in the insurance industry since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law.

It could become another source of political controversy for the Obama administration next year, when the plans take effect. Frustrated consumers could then begin to realise what is not always evident when buying a product as complicated as healthcare insurance: that their new plans do not cover many facilities or doctors “in network”. In other words, the facilities and doctors are not among the list of approved providers in a certain plan.

Under some US health insurance plans, consumers can elect to visit medical facilities that are “out of network”, but they would probably incur high out of pocket costs and may need referrals to prove that such care is medically necessary.

Millions of Americans are being informed they’re being dropped from their insurance plans because the plans don’t meet minimum Obamacare standards, but President Obama so far has stood by his promise that “if you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance.”

Insurance plans that existed on the individual market before the passage of the Affordable Care Act were “grandfathered” in, the president and his supporters have argued, and consumers only lost coverage if insurers altered those policies after the law took effect. In that case, Mr. Obama said last week, insurers had to “replace them with quality, comprehensive coverage.”

In any event, the administration argues, the promise still applies to the vast majority of people.

“If you’re one of the 80 percent of Americans who is insured or covered through an employer plan or through Medicare or Medicaid, or the Veterans’ Administration, there is no change for you except for an increase in benefits that everyone receives as a result of the Affordable Care Act,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday.

Yet in the years to come, some workers with employer-provided benefits will see their benefits scaled back because of an Obamacare tax. That portion of the law — known as the “Cadillac tax” — isn’t set to take effect until 2018, but it’s already influencing the benefits packages that employers offer.

“Every employer plan since the passage of the health care law has been working to make sure their health care cost trends keep their plans under the ‘Cadillac tax,'” Steve Wojcik of the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit that represents large employers, told CBSNews.com.

The administration’s argument for the individual market applies to the employer-based market: No one with health insurance should expect to keep their current plan forever.

“The expectation was never there that a plan is going to be set in stone for any length of time,” Wojcik said. “Plans should adopt to new evidence and new benefits practices — they shouldn’t be set in stone… We’ve wanted to do something about health care costs growing out of control.”

That said, Wojcik added, the “Cadillac tax” is “bringing more immediacy” to the issue, prompting employers to scale back plans they wouldn’t otherwise, “with the 2018 deadline looming.”

If you take the time to read just one thing this weekend seriously consider this article…

Wayne Allyn Root outlines why ObamaCare is going as planned, and is not a “trainwreck”, but the red train charging down the tracks headed for the destruction of our nation’s political, societal and cultural structure … and if the GOP intends to survive the real destruction planned by Obama they had better get their heads out of their collective asses and stand-up to it now.

The GOP needs to stop calling ObamaCare a “trainwreck.” That means it’s a mistake, or accident. That means it’s a gigantic flop, or failure. It’s NOT.

This is a brilliant, cynical, and purposeful attempt to damage the U.S. economy, kill jobs, and bring down capitalism.

It’s not a failure, it’s Obama’s grand success.

It’s not a “trainwreck,” ObamaCare is a suicide attack. He wants to hurt us, to bring us to our knees, to capitulate- so we agree under duress to accept big government.

Obama’s hero and mentor was Saul Alinsky — a radical Marxist intent on destroying capitalism. Alinksky’s stated advice was to call the other guy “a terrorist” to hide your own intentions.

To scream that the other guy is “ruining America,” while you are the one actually plotting the destruction of America. To claim again and again…in every sentence of every speech…that you are “saving the middle class,” while you are busy wiping out the middle class.

The GOP is so stupid they can’t see it. There are no mistakes here. This is a planned purposeful attack.

The tell-tale sign isn’t the disastrous start to ObamaCare. Or the devastating effect the new taxes are having on the economy. Or the death of full-time jobs. Or the overwhelming debt. Or the dramatic increases in health insurance rates. Or the 70% of doctors now thinking of retiring- bringing on a healthcare crisis of unimaginable proportions. Forget all that.

The real sign that this is a purposeful attack upon capitalism is how many Obama administration members and Democratic Congressmen are openly calling Tea Party Republicans and anyone who wants to stop ObamaCare “terrorists.”

There’s the clue. Even the clueless GOP should be able to see that.

They are calling the reasonable people…the patriots…the people who believe in the Constitution … the people who believe exactly what the Founding Fathers believed…the people who want to take power away from corrupt politicians who have put America $17 trillion in debt…terrorists?

And that isn’t even the meat of it. You must read the full article. We are in serious trouble.

I too have been saying for the last five years how Obama is not failing as everyone is perceiving him to be. He is failing by our own common sense standards, yes, but common sense like personal responsibility is intentionally becoming extinct. It’s as if people honestly expect him to do things the obviously correct way to fix the mess. However, all this devolution of our rights, the economy, and even our societal/cultural mentality serves his agenda and the ongoing progressive/socialist/communist/Marxist revolution’s purpose in this country.

Lost in the hubbub surrounding the malfunctioning HealthCare.gov is another missed deadline and closed door for millions of Americans seeking health insurance: Cuidado­DeSalud.gov.

The Spanish-language site still does not allow consumers to enroll for exchange coverage, a delay that was previously estimated by administration officials to last until mid-October.

A spokeswoman from the Health and Human Services Department declined to comment on when consumers will be able to sign up for health insurance on CuidadoDeSalud.gov and whether the additional delay is related to the malfunctions on the English language site, HealthCare.gov.

If I may, I ponder a possible(?) deliberate ‘glitch’ there because of this…

The continued holdup of CuidadoDeSalud.gov has staff at the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda pressing the White House to get a move on. The NHLA kicked off the National Hispanic Health Week of Action on Monday.

“This is a critical priority for the Latino community, that they have access to affordable health care,” NHLA Chairman Hector Sanchez said.

The NHLA is advising communities to apply by phone and paper, but said it will likely have another outreach campaign once the Spanish-language site begins accepting applications.

“The message here is that we have six months to get this done,” Sanchez said. “Even with these glitches, the process is easier than it was before.”

And the fact that:

1.) Very few have actually gotten onto the glitch-plagued primary ObamaCare site to even have an extensive look

But here is something the American people absolutely need to be made fully aware of … Twitchy is reporting just a couple short hours before the midnight hour shutdown last night witnesses began tweeting on Twitter that pretty much every other Congress-critter that was filing into the House reeked of booze. THAT is how they spent their dinner hours? Slopping it down with bent elbows on a shutdown bender … perhaps in celebration … prior to entering chambers to continue to decide the fate of the American people and this debt floundering nation? Perhaps THIS is exactly how these SOBs come to work, on our dime, everyday. But in those hours prior to shutting down Obama added to the taxpayer Obama subsidies the US Congress and their staff are gifted with by adding abortion coverage to it. Recall, some democrats back in 2009 only added their ‘yes’ votes to ObamaCare passage by being promised it would not cover abortion. The 2009 “YOU LIE!” outburst from Rep. Joe Wilson seems to be echoing very loudly these days, on so many levels. Good God Almighty, help us…

Meanwhile, Sen. Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to channel England’s King George in 1773 by castigating the dangerous TEA Party anarchists……

What is left to say? We are now stating the obvious. As the democrat-run Senate and the GOP-lead House play a tug-of-war over shutting down the U.S. government over the funding of the unwanted ObamaCare law, Obama and the White House continue to dismiss the facts and deny ObamaCare’s already damage to jobs and the economy, and ignore and deny the damage to come. On top of this pain to the American worker and family, moonbatNancy Pelosi praises the fact that American workers have now been reduced to part time incomes because of ObamaCare.

As ObamaCare Enrollment begins tomorrow, here are a few links to follow for how ObamaCare has already done damage to this country and the American people, and the damage yet to come:

How great were the first four years under Obama?
Let’s just say Hugo Chavez is grinning up from Hell…

During the four years that marked President Barack Obama’s first term in office, the real median income of American households dropped by $2,627 and the number of people in poverty increased by approximately 6,667,000, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.

The record total of approximately 46,496,000 people in the United States who are now in poverty, according to the Census Bureau, is more than twice the population of Syria, which, according to the CIA, has 22,457,336 people.

In 2008, the year Obama was elected, real median household income in the United States was $53,644 according to the Census Bureau. In 2012, the last full year of Obama’s first term, median household income was $51,017. Thus, real median household income dropped $2,627—or 4.89 percent—from 2008 to 2012.

In fact, real median household income dropped in every year of Obama’s first term. In 2008, when he was elected, it was $53,644. In 2009, the year he was inaugurated, it dropped to 53,285. In 2010, his second year in office, it dropped to $51,892. In 2011, his third year in office, it dropped to $51,100. And, in 2012, his fourth year in office, it dropped to $51,017.

At the same time the number of people living in poverty in the United States increased. In 2008, according to the Census Bureau, there were approximately 39,829,000 people living in poverty in this country. In 2012, there were 46,496,000. That is an increase of approximately 6,667,000—of 16.73 percent—from 2008 to 2012.

As the one year anniversary of the deadly attack on an American consulate in Benghazi approaches, journalists have begun to take another look into the scandal surrounding the government’s response to that terrorist event. Last week, CNN aired two striking reports revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had a large number of agents on the ground on the night of the attack and that a suspect in the attack has never been interviewed by investigators. Following these revelatory reports, which some in President Barack Obama’s administration believe represent a political threat, some CNN reporters now fear for their access to the White House. They are not alone.

On July 31, CNN’s The Situation Room broadcast a portion of an interview conducted by reporter Arwa Damon with a suspect in the Benghazi attacks. The suspect revealed to Damon that no investigator has attempted to contact him regarding his involvement in that deadly assault. The following day, CNN’s Drew Griffin broke the news that more than 30 CIA agents were on the ground in Libya on the day of the attack and they are being pressured by the spy agency to not reveal to reporters or congressional investigators what they know of the events of that night. Some CNN reporters are reportedly fearful now that their access to the White House will be hampered following their probing into a story that members of the Obama administration would prefer remain uninvestigated.

“Access is a very serious consideration when it comes to stories that could adversely impact a show, correspondent, or network’s relationship with the administration, a campaign, or any political leader,” one source with insider information told Mediaite.

“I would suggest it’s not an accident that those who have been given a lot of access to the president have generally been AWOL when it comes to stories that might reflect poorly on him,” the source, who did not wish to be identified, continued. “It’s the name of the game. And it’s bad for everyone trying to do this job the right way.” Those reporters have reason to fear for their access to America’s executive branch. Some suspect that reporters who soft-pedal or underreport stories uncomfortable to the administration receive preferential access to White House officials.

President Obama continues to say nothing to a jittery nation about what some who have been briefed on the danger are describing as the worst terrorist threat since 9/11, declining to either offer reassurance or an explanation of the peril the nation faces.

Certainly, the president does not want to take questions about a threat he had minimized during the 2012 campaign. But what’s striking is that he has not addressed the nation in a formal manner on the potential for a major attack.

Incredibly, the first question Obama might take on the situation could come from a comedian. Obama is scheduled to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno this evening in California, and the topic is sure to come up. He has an event earlier in the day, but it’s a campaign-style appearance at a high school in Phoenix, also an odd venue to be discussing potential terrorist attacks.

Hey, MSM, you’re not the least bit pissed about this? I mean, can you imagine how the very same MSM would be reacting were it Pres. George W. Bush spending the weekend golfing while a record number of U.S. embassies in the world were closed due to a hightened terror threat(s) here and abroad … and then ducking onto a late night entertainment show for a bit of softball back-and-forth?

Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee and obtained exclusively by National Review Online. The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law. Lerner, the former head of the IRS’s exempt-organizations division, worked at the FEC from 1986 to 1995, and was known for aggressive investigation of conservative groups during her tenure there, too.

“Several months ago . . . I spoke with you about the American Future Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that had submitted an exemption application the IRS [sic],” the FEC attorney wrote Lerner in February 2009. The FEC, which polices violations of campaign-finance laws, is not exempted under Rule 6103, which prohibits the IRS from sharing confidential taxpayer information, but the e-mail indicates Lerner may have provided that information nonetheless: “When we spoke last July, you had told us that the American Future Fund had not received an exemption letter from the IRS,” the FEC attorney wrote.

The timing of the correspondence between Lerner and the FEC suggests the FEC attorney sought information from the IRS in order to influence an upcoming vote by the six FEC commissioners…

[…]

House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp and oversight-subcommittee chairman Charles Boustany are calling on the IRS, in the wake of these revelations, to provide all communications between the agency and the FEC between 2008 and 2012. “The American public is entitled to know whether the IRS is inappropriately sharing their confidential tax information with other agencies,” …

As usual we must swim across the deep blue pond to get the honest reviews/reporting from the UK’s non-Obama appeasing media. Here is the Telegraph’s Nile Gardiner on Obama’s long and inane speech from yesterday afternoon at Knox College, Illinois…

Today’s speech at Knox College, Illinois, was supposed to be the president’s come-back moment, the first of a series of addresses aimed at retaking the initiative by the White House. Instead it was a train-wreck. In an hour-long address, which seemed to last forever (and par for course started 15 minutes late), the president spoke in deeply partisan terms, often with bitterness and anger, lambasting his political opponents, dismissing criticism of his policies, and launching into his favourite theme of class warfare, attacking the wealthy and what he calls the “winner takes all economy.” In a display of extraordinary arrogance (even by his standards), he condemned what he called “an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals,” a direct reference to the Congressional investigations into the IRS and Benghazi scandals, which most Americans don’t see as phony. He also defended his increasingly unpopular Obamacare proposals, attacking what he calls “a politically-motivated misinformation campaign,” while failing to acknowledge that moderate Democrats are “steadily turning against Obamacare” as The Washington Postreported today.

This was a highly defensive speech, with President Obama in full campaign mode. There were no fresh ideas, just a tired rehash of earlier campaign rhetoric. It was also another love letter to big government, with a clarion call for yet more federal spending on environmental measures, infrastructure, manufacturing, and a laundry list of liberal pet causes. There was not a word about reducing the burden of government regulation, and getting bureaucracy off the backs of entrepreneurs. His speech promised more government spending at a time when America’s national debt is approaching a staggering $17 trillion. He rejected tax cuts, and bashed the rich, at times sounding more like Francois Hollande than the leader of the free world.

Once again, Barack Obama demonstrated why he has built an unenviable reputation as a perpetual campaigner in chief, with an overwhelmingly partisan agenda. Obama is no Ronald Reagan, who always sought to bring the country together based on the common ideals of the Founding Fathers. President Obama’s message will do nothing to reassure a sceptical American public. With unemployment still above 10 percent in 27 major US metropolitan areas, and nearly one in six Americans living on food stamps, the economic record of this administration leaves much to be desired. Today in Illinois, President Obama spoke the language of decline, promising more of the same left-wing policies that have weakened US competitiveness, eroded economic freedom, and have saddled the world’s superpower with historic levels of debt. Americans deserve better than the failed statism that has bankrupted cities like Detroit, and threatens to do the same to the rest of the country.

While watching Sean Hannity’s FOX News Channel TV show last night, Sean was running a recording of this Obama speech silently in the botton right corner of the screen, showing how long the man had droned on and on, and did not finish by the time Hannity’s show had ended. Here is a link to the video and the transcript of Obama’s Knox College, Illinois speech from yesterday.

Conservative radio host Michael Savage has been warning for years about “The Enemy Within”. It is like a cancer … by the time you actually see it and feel it you just might be in the end stage and dying…

Obama and his team have subverted the government they pledged to serve.

Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Without honesty, the foundations of consensual government crumble. If the Internal Revenue Service acts unlawfully, our system of citizens’ computing their own taxes implodes.

Yet Lois Lerner, one of the IRS’s top officials, would not answer simple questions about her agency’s conduct during congressional testimony, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment. Any taxpayer who tried that with an IRS auditor would end up fined, if not in jail.

[…] IRS malfeasance was not limited only to the Cincinnati office, as alleged, but followed directives sent from higher-ups in Washington.

[…]

Attorney General Eric Holder — who had already been held in contempt by the House of Representatives for declining to turn over internal Justice Department documents in the earlier Fast and Furious scandal — swore to Congress that he had no knowledge of any effort to go after individual reporters. But according to an official Justice Department statement, Holder had in fact signed off on the search warrant to monitor the communications of Fox News reporter James Rosen. In other words, the attorney general of the United States under oath misled — or lied to — Congress.

[…]

Deception is now institutionalized in the Obama administration. It infects almost every corner of the executive branch, eroding the trust necessary for the IRS, the Department of Justice, our security agencies, and the president’s official spokesman — sabotaging the public trust required for democracy itself.

What went wrong with the Obama administration?

For one thing, there is no longer a traditional adversarial media in Washington. Spouses and siblings of executives at the major television networks are embedded within the administration. […]

There is also utopian arrogance in Washington that justifies any means necessary to achieve exalted ends of supposed fairness and egalitarianism. If one has to tell a lie to stop the Tea Party or Fox News, then it is not seen by this administration as a lie…

President Obama said Saturday that scientists must design new fuels and energy sources to curb carbon pollution, part of a larger plan that he will announce next week that is expected to include efforts to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The president says in an online video that his plan includes preparing the United States for the effects of such pollution, which has been connected to climate change, and leading other nations in such efforts.

The new details and the Environmental Protection Agency-led plan for coal-firing plants, under the Clean Air Act, comes as no surprise, considering what Obama said in 2008 while running for this first term.

“If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” he said.

Obama also says in the video that no single step can reverse climate change and that workers must prepare for a clean energy economy.

Obama was literally on display in the bubble he lives in, as his security had him behind thick glass that looked much like a fish aquarium. He removed his suit jacket as sweat began soaking his face to reveal this emperor really has no clothes. The absence of a U.S. Marine to hold a comforting umbrella over his dripping head was obvious. The crowd was noticeably far smaller than his arrogant and presumptuous 2008 campaign speech in Berlin. Early press releases put the number at 6000, but as the afternoon ticked-on here in the States that number dropped. I even heard one radio news report referring to the crowd as “guests”, which caused me to contemplate many gathered might have been officially invited to the event. (Yesterday’s anti-IRS TEA Party in D.C. is estimated to have drawn roughly 15,000.) The German audience’s responses to his weakly power-pointed and passionless speech were tepid, even when it was obvious he offered them a pause to insert applause. His two obvious go-to talking points that could be fished out of the deluge of sunbaked rambling were aimed at our biggest threat (outside of Catholic schools), “climate change”, and the dismantling of our nuclear arsenal in the face of our enemies toiling-away in clandestine locations to build theirs. The staunch Obama defending cheerleaders of the media were quick to deflect.

In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance. This was a speech big on platitudes and hopeless idealism, while containing much that was counter-productive for the world’s superpower. Ultimately it was little more than a laundry list of Obama’s favourite liberal pet causes, including cutting nuclear weapons, warning about climate change, putting an end to all wars, shutting Guantanamo, ending global poverty, and backing the European Project. It was a combination of staggering naiveté, the appeasement of America’s enemies and strategic adversaries, and the championing of more big government solutions.

There was little in this speech that advances US interests, or makes the world a safer place. Completely missing from Obama’s address was a call for the West to stand up to the rising threat of Islamist militancy, the defence of Christians facing huge levels of persecution and intimidation in the Middle East, strong condemnation of Iran and North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and any criticism of growing authoritarianism in Russia. The president paid lip service to the NATO alliance, which has proved critical in preserving Europe’s security for over 60 years, but made no call for the alliance to be strengthened in the wake of waning support and investment in Europe.

President Obama’s words may well have pleased his German government hosts, content to see a United States whose ambitions as a military power have been significantly clipped since George W. Bush left office in 2009. But Barack Obama underscored again why he is no JFK or Ronald Reagan. In front of the Brandenburg Gate, Obama sounded more like the president of the European Commission than the leader of the free world. It is never a good sign when a US president parrots the language of a Brussels bureaucrat when he is supposed to be a champion of freedom. Obama’s distinctly unimpressive speech in Berlin was another dud from a floundering president whose leadership abroad is just as weak as it is at home.

Three observations of the above photo of Obama. First, why the need for the heavy glass enclosure? Is there some threat we are not aware of? Second, the reflection in the security glass is of the Secret Service and press pool, not the gathered audience. Third, compared to JFK and Reagan … and even to his own 2008 Berlin performance… Obama’s choice of podium insignia yesterday is rather odd (he and his people have control/say over what is used/displayed). Yes, I know it’s the German eagle insignia, however, for somebody who just a month ago scoffed over fears of tyranny it was subliminally interesting. I mean, given all the planes that have traveled with Obama and his family on this trip, you mean there wasn’t room to load his own podium (insignia or not) to use?